Israel Calls Up Reserves, a Sign of Wider Ground Raids

JERUSALEM, July 21 —With small units already operating in southern Lebanon, the Israeli military massed armored vehicles near its northern border today and called up several thousand reserve soldiers, suggesting that expanded ground operations and extended combat may lie ahead.

The heavy fighting, now in its 10th day, showed no signs of letting up. The Israeli Air Force blasted targets throughout Lebanon today, and for the second day, dropped leaflets in Hezbollah-dominated areas of south Lebanon warning residents to move north of the Litani River. The leaflets also hinted at the prospect of wider Israeli ground operations.

Hundreds of thousands of Lebanese, most of them Shiite villagers, live south of the river, which is about 12 miles north of Lebanon’s border with Israel. Many already have fled, and more are leaving daily.

Hezbollah, meanwhile, continued to rain rockets on northern Israel.

Israeli jets hit Shiite districts in Beirut’s southern suburbs, the eastern Bekaa Valley and southern Lebanon around sunrise. The Israelis also bombed the Mdeirej bridge on the main Beirut-Damascus highway, which had already been hit twice before.

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Coffins bearing the names and bodies of 86 civilians are lined up for a mass grave in Tyre, Lebanon. They will be given proper burials later.Credit
Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

Counting at least 12 Lebanese killed today, about 350 people have so far lost their lives in the Israeli air, sea and ground assault throughout Lebanon. The great majority of those killed were civilians, according to Lebanese officials. An estimated half-million Lebanese throughout the country have fled their homes.

Thirty-four Israelis have been killed so far, 19 soldiers and 15 civilians.

“Human life is of supreme value, but this is a demanding operation, and we are at war,” said Maj. Gen. Udi Adam, who commands the Israeli forces fighting on the Lebanese front, in remarks shown on Israeli television. “War costs human lives — look how many civilians have been killed. I suggest we don’t count the dead until it’s all over.”

Today’s wave of rocket attacks by Hezbollah hit the Israeli port city of Haifa and other towns in northern Israel. More than 10 people were wounded when a rocket hit a Haifa apartment building, Israeli officials said.

Overall, more than 20 people were injured in northern Israel by more than 50 Hezbollah rockets that hit the region, according to the Israeli military.

Rocket fire by Hezbollah has tailed off somewhat in the last few days, down from a rate of more than 100 a day in the first few days of the fighting.

Israel claims it has significantly weakened Hezbollah’s capabilities, but acknowledges that it will not be able to completely cripple the militant Shiite group.

Israeli military officers and government officials have said that they do not want to send a large ground force into southern Lebanon. Israeli troops withdrew from the area in 2000 after more than two decades of occupation.

“We shall carry out limited ground operations as necessary in order to strike at the terrorism which strikes at us,” the Army’s chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, said this evening.

Still. columns of tanks and armored personnel carriers are massed on roads near the border, and the Israeli leadership says that small groups of ground troops have been entering Lebanon to carry out operations that cannot be readily handled with air strikes.

Those operations include seeking out Hezbollah rockets and launchers as well as bunkers and other Hezbollah strongholds tucked away in and around villages in south Lebanon.

The military has not provided figures, but relatively few soldiers are inside Lebanon at any given time, according to military officials. They are penetrating only a couple of miles at most into Lebanese territory, and generally move in and out without holding fixed positions, the officials said.

Israel’s defence minister, Amir Peretz, said that the number of Israeli troops on the ground in Lebanon would be determined by military necessity. He stressed that the military would not allow itself to become bogged down in Lebanese territory, Israel radio reported.

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Israeli forces sent shells across the border and into southern Lebanon today.Credit
Pavel Wolberg/European Pressphoto Agency

Hezbollah has already demonstrated that it can put up fierce resistance when Israeli ground troops cross the border.

Five Israeli soldiers were killed inside Lebanon on the first day of fighting, July 12. In intense firefights on Wednesday and Thursday, six Israeli soldiers were killed just inside Lebanon, according to the military. Hezbollah fighters were also killed in these exchanges.

In a statement, the military said the reserves were being called up “in order to enable the reinforcement of troops situated along the northern border.”

The statement did not say if the reserves would be sent to the Lebanese border area. One possibility is that standing military units in the West Bank and Gaza Strip areas could be transferred to the Lebanese front, while the reserves could replace those troops in the Palestinian areas.

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British nationals during a massive evacuation in Beirut on July 20. Credit
Yannis Behrakis/Reuters

Lebanon’s defense minister, Elias Murr, said Thursday that the Lebanese Army, which has so far remained on the sidelines, would enter the battle if Israel invaded.

“The Lebanese Army will resist and defend the country and prove that it is an army worth of respect,” he said.

With no end to the fighting in sight, humanitarian concerns are growing.

International aid groups say they need urgent access to southern Lebanon to provide medical assistance and food. Israel’s U.N. ambassador, Dan Gillerman, said he expected a safe corridor for humanitarian assistance to be opened by Saturday.

In the southern Lebanese town of Tyre, tempers ran high as municipal officials faced increasingly frustrated residents demanding food, humanitarian aid, and services. But the local government could do little other than to ask for patience.

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Americans on a landing craft as they approached the U.S.S Nashville.Credit
Yiorgos Karahalis/Reuters

“There are no more supplies,” said Mohammad al Husseini, the son of Tyre’s mayor, who was helping with logistical efforts. “We’re registering people for rations, but can’t give them anything. I think the next thing is for us to be beaten up.”

The municipality has sought to buy every piece of bread it can get, but only one bakery has remained open; the rest are shut, either out of fear of the bombing or because the fuel that fired their ovens ran out. Fruit and vegetables are hard to come by, meat even more so. About the only edible things still available in the town’s market are the watermelons from local farms.

Most food staples are plentiful about 20 miles further north, across the Litani river. But getting supplies here has become extremely difficult because bridges over the river are bombed out.

Still, Tyre is more fortunate than some other towns, where basic foods like bread and rice have run out and heavy bombing makes it impossible for residents to leave, officials said. Gasoline, available only on the black market, is being sold in one-liter water bottles rather than the usual five-gallon cans.

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An American sailor prepared for the departure of American evacuees near Beirut Thursday. They were taken to a ship headed to Cyprus.Credit
Kevork Djansezian/Associated Press

Almost 70 percent of the south’s population has left the area, local officials estimate. The situation has grown so bad that many officials in the area look at departing convoys with some relief, because they mean fewer mouths to feed.

In Beirut, the evacuation of foreigners from Lebanon continued, with helicopters and barges ferrying evacuees to military ships in the Mediterranean just offshore. About 4,500 Americans were waiting to move out in the second day of large-scale evacuations of United States citizens.

In all, about 60,000 foreigners and Lebanese with dual citizenship have fled the country in sea evacuations, and another 40,000 have left overland through Syria, according to the Lebanese government.

In Israel, citizens have rallied around their government and the military. A survey published today in the newspaper Maariv said that 78 percent of Israelis were satisfied with the performance of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, and 95 percent believed Israel’s military response was “justified and correct.”

About 800 people responded to the survey questions, and the margin of sampling error was plus or minus 4 percent, the newspaper said.

Israeli forces also continued to fight on a second front, in the Gaza Strip.

Israeli tank fire hit the home of a Hamas militant, killing him and three members of his family, according to Palestinian security officials. The Israeli military said that two armed men with an anti-tank missile had been spotted on the balcony of the house.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian prime minister, Ismail Haniya, called again for an exchange of Palestinian prisoners for an Israeli corporal, Gilad Shalit, whose capture by Palestinian militants on June 25 touched off the crisis in Gaza. Mr. Haniya said the call for a prisoner swap was “a national Palestinian demand.”

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will travel to the Middle East on Sunday in search of a resolution to the crisis. With the Bush administration strongly supporting Israel, her visit could signal whether a diplomatic solution is on the horizon, though there has been little evidence of this so far.

Jad Mouawad reported from Beirut for this article, and Greg Myre from Jerusalem. Hassan Fattah contributed reporting from Tyre, Lebanon.